this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Sodium could easily replace lithium in EV applications if people would acknowledge that only 2% of trips are more than 50 miles. Though it's probably moreso the auto industry's fault that people have this assumption they need to prepare for a three hundred mile journey on a moments notice.
If manufacturers were putting out cars that had four figure price tags with double digit ranges, they would become the best selling vehicles within a decade and no one would care if it was sodium, lithium, or sawdust. Of course, there is less profit to be made from smaller vehicles and so the corporations won't bother.
That's assuming you don't have issues charging at where you live, which is a pretty big if for a lot of people. A 300 Mi charge would mean if you can't charge daily, you would be able to go a couple of days without having to do so.
Given most trips are less than 3 miles, if you had a 300 mile range vehicle, that's about three months of average driving, not a couple of days. My point was that people don't go on long drives the vast majority of time and don't more than fifty or so miles of range.
I'll use Tesla as the example here only because it's the prominent electric car brand. Directly from them:
They go one to say you can get a 10x improvement on the miles per hour when charging from a 240v outlet. Even accounting for installation of a new outlet to the garage or side of the house, this would be far cheaper than buying a vehicle with hundreds of miles of range and using a supercharger every other week.
I live about 5 miles from work. I usually drive about 20 miles a day, so about 140 a week. I also rent an apt where there are no options for a charger. I considered a mini Cooper se and even a fiat 500e for a bit (it's really cheap when you can find it), but once I looked my driving, I was only going to be comfortable with a 200 mile range for the occasional (once or twice a month) trips that are 100 miles one way. While chargers along the trip might be available, most times I've seen them they are clearly broken (provided it isn't tesla, which seems to repair them). I do live in a city, but even then the 100 miles range would be tough to accommodate. Not saying impossible (I've seen electric mustangs and electric Chevrolets in my apartment), but a range of 100 miles is a lot less feasible for most than I think the data suggests, although that might also be fine if charging was faster.
Don't get me wrong, obviously people like yourself make these long ish trips regularly and you'd benefit either from more range or better infrastructure. If, like gas stations, there were two hundred thousand charging stations sprinkled through the country, less range in the car would be less of a concern.
I know someone from my college days that hung a 100' cord out her third story window to plug in her little EV. Nissan Leaf or something of that class. Worked like a charm for puttering around town.
I'm sure the data isn't perfect, but as far as the averages go, it's accurate for my driving patterns. Those trips you're taking nearly double your yearly mileage, so that would certainly change your average. Without them though, you wouldn't be too far off based on what you've described. I'm fortunate that I live near a train line for my regular trips out of town. Not an option for the vast majority unfortunately.
Another option a couple I know took was a hybrid. Most of the time they don't use the engine, but when they go see family or what have you, they've got the range they need without having to find a charger. Pretty convenient if you ask me.
Eventually we'll have charging stations all over, or maybe light rail, and going hundreds of miles in a day without a thought to battery depletion, but I doubt I'll be around to see it.
Oh, I don't doubt it's possible, but getting the avg person there is the issue. At my milage, if I really absolutely wanted to go electric, an ebike would frankly be a better option (admittedly, much harder to haul stuff, much less safe, and annoying during the summer which is very hot in my area) for low range stuff. Phev Hybrids are a decent option, but again, if you don't have a place to charge at night a lot of the benefits are neglected. Not gonna lie, I do actually suspect that that will change in the next 10 years, as tesla have finally hit critical mass I my area, and they are much cheaper to fuel, something that isn't highlighted enough in my opinion. And I suspect that sodium batteries will more than likely cause it. Having something incredibly cheap to drive is more than likely what will turn the tide of evs, and it is why I am very annoyed that Chinese evs aren't being imported into the US without insane tarriffs. Once cheap evs are common, the need for charging might actually get some real notice. That being said, I think my considerations aren't very far off from the concerns of many buying cars right now, and at the current moment those without a range of at least 200 miles are a much harder sell (and why lower range vehicles don't seem to sell on the used market).
The used market is different for EVs than a combustion vehicle. I looked for a BMW i3 a while back and was only finding them halfway across the continent. Maybe that's because people keep them for longer? Not sure that market has developed enough to know one way or another.
I understand what you mean about the average person getting it, and while that is important, I think the primary issue is the limited selection of small EVs on the market. As you point out, if foreign vehicles could be acquired without the steep cost, more people would drive them. As it stands, domestic automakers don't want to make anything but twenty foot long SUVs because of the huge profit margins on them.
As far as ebikes go, I am definitely on that boat. Don't have one myself - call me a traditionalist - but I wish more people would consider them. I agree that in higher temperatures, or humidity which I find worse, it's uncomfortable. Though the benefit of (maybe idealistically) not having a car payment and associated insurance go a long way to making that discomfort palatable.
Personally, I've got a trailer for my bike that I've been using to ride 10-15 minutes to the grocery stores and do errands. A time or two I have even gotten some lumber with it from the hardware store. I thought about a specific cargo bike a while back but decided not to have an entire bicycle for that sort of thing. The trailer is smaller anyway.
The safety factor of riding opposed to driving is the most important factor in my mind. It's dangerous to ride along the side of a multi lane road. Paint doesn't stop drivers from crossing into a 'bike lane'. Even a curb or those plastic bollards are insufficient in my mind. I ride nearly primarily on trails or the type of streets that are small enough not to have any painted lines. For busier routes I use the sidewalk or even the boulevard if there is one.
The more people getting on the ebike wagon could cause better riding options to be developed in the area. That's political though. Even if it doesn't, it's one more person taking a trip not in a car, making it a tiny bit safer.
Why is a problem adding an electronical sock on your parking space?
Because I rent an apartment, thus can't add a socket. I had a coworker trying to get them added our work parking lot, but to no avail.
I guess is done then. Nobody should use EVs with small batteries because you can't charge them.
That obviously isn't their position. They don't own the building they live in nor the business they work for.
EV owner here. 50 miles is not practical, beacuse then I need another for the other 2% of trips that are longer than that. This also ignores detours or traffic jams, when google will try to reroute me over a longer, but faster route. Plus, the "50 miles" readout you get is always just an estimate and the real range depends on temperature, driving speed, start-stops and how much elevation you need to cover. Some 30km trips here cost me 50+ EV km because its all uphill in one direction. I usually add 30km to my trip as required charge, because when the battery reaches 25km the car starts to complain with a nervously blinking battery readout and a "Charge now!" message on the dashboard.
"But then you just charge during the trip!" - Well this only work if i go somewhere where i know where to find RELIABLE chargers. I am well aware that there are good apps that show me charging locations, but getting a charging spot I can actually use is a different story:
Not saying EVs are bad, but the charging infrastructure still needs some work to be reliable and accessible. Petrol stations always have some large, obnoxious signs on the side of the road that you cant miss; Charging stations are sometimes just a tiny grey box on a wall and a 5-space parking lot, or behind a building and you never notice it when driving by.
A lot of households, like my own, have multiple cars. We have a commuter (50 miles round trip) and a family car. We use the commuter for most trips around town (only commutes 2x/week), and the family car for longer road trips.
I don't need a car that can do both, I just need to replace the commuter since that's where the vast majority of our driving is.
Don't try to solve the hard problem of putting charging stations in the middle of nowhere, solve the easy problem of replacing that second car. For that, sodium-ion is more than sufficient. Focus infrastructure improvements on apartment complexes, workplaces, and shopping centers so people who don't have a garage can charge.
2015 Leaf owner here. I will agree with everything you said! If you know you know...and you my friend are spot phucking on
I wrote elsewhere about the infrastructure problem, but I'll sum up a couple things. There's around 200,000 gas stations in the United States. If there were an equivalent number of chargers around, having a small battery would be fine. Eventually this will be the case, but you highlight an important factor: closed ecosystems. All these chargers should work for any make of EV car.
As it stands with now, the need for a subscription or specific car or unique payment method is ludicrous. All these chargers should be required to have card readers the same way you can pay at the pump in a gas station. Beyond this, they'd all need to adopt the same charging method so people don't need a bunch of adapters in their trunk.
That said, there could be regulations established to require newly built housing, apartment buildings included, to have electric vehicle charging infrastructure - and more than just a few plugs. Grants could be made available for retrofitting existing buildings. If these things came to fruition, we wouldn't need two hundred thousand charging stations all over the place. It's not out of the question to install an overnight charging spot for every person that has an electric car - it just costs money.
Basically every argument I've seen against low range electric cars is founded in a charging infrastructure problem. Going to a bigger battery in a larger vehicle has significant and more costly ramifications on other infrastructure. It's better to aim for smaller, lighter vehicles with infrastructure in mind.